The phrase "a certain longing for" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to express a specific desire or yearning for something, often in a more poetic or reflective context.
Example: "She felt a certain longing for the carefree days of her childhood, when life seemed simpler and more joyful."
Alternatives: "a deep yearning for" or "a specific desire for".
Although most of those who attended clearly felt right at home in Florida, some expressed a certain longing for their old haunts.
Family aside, he would still prefer to live in a tent, though "you do get a certain longing for a shower and hard surfaces to sit against," he conceded.
To their Muslim students, many of whom grew up seeing Yusuf and Shakir speak to rapturous crowds at Muslim gatherings across the U.S. and Canada, they're celebrities, even saints, and around Zaytuna, Korb writes, there's a certain "longing for the scholars, a strange covetousness that you don't find at other liberal arts schools".
As she basks in the thick carpet and warm shower, she feels a certain longing for the discomfort of traveling the world.
This is also why he emphasized that each work of art is the expression of a certain longing, a craving for the recreation of that very unity experienced through the "spiritual feeling (geistige Anschauung)[2] of Nature" (SW III, 307).
Even though that was such a wrenching moment for our nation, I look back on it now with a certain longing and nostalgia.
For Mr. Croze, the Frenchman, a stroll down Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, the popular street of Italian food markets, satisfies a certain longing.
They both certainly seem nostalgic for the One Show: it comes up a lot, always with a certain wistful longing.
Madonna lost her mother to breast cancer when she was 4. Wikipedia quotes her as saying: "The anguish of losing my mom left me with a certain kind of loneliness and an incredible longing for something.
The anguish of losing my mom left me with a certain kind of loneliness and an incredible longing for something.
